Windows 10 LTSB / EDU and WHOOPS where did the photo viewer go!

[DigiBen]

Just before christmas my team looked at the various versions of Windows 10 and decided ENT LTSB was the best option for our schools. The cut-down look was great, and easiest to sell on to teachers as its just an updated Win7.

 

But this week a teacher asked me "where is the photo viewer?".... Urm....

Turns out "Photo Viewer" is not enabled, you can do a registry fix to bring it back. But that made us realise that the new Photo app wasnt present, or the calculator, or any remote option of sideloading apps in the future.

(I think it is possible to load apps to LTSB, but its not officially supported so we will be avoiding this.)

 

As a result, we need to rethink our deployments. I am looking at whether Education or Enterprise is best for schools, what do you think?

 

I think Education seems the best bet

Sadly though during our time trials LTSB was under 2 minutes for initial login, but Education was 3-4minutes for initial login. So this is going to annoy the pupils without a doubt!

 

How is everyone deploying apps btw?

[Garacesh]

I can't speak for Photo Viewer (a quick test with Enterprise LTSB shows it open .jpgs with Paint by default) but it certainly does have a calculator. Bonus points, it's the Desktop version of the program, not the TIFKAM one.

[SHimmer45]

Longer logon times are likely because the pre-staged apps are still present in your default profile, and then gets copied / setup each time the user logs in.

 

there is another thread discussing using Education / Enterprise LTSB & like you i preferred the looks of LTSB but it appears LTSB isnt going to get certain upgrades / fixes as quickly as a none ltsb release (still wading through the differences)

[sted]

can you extract the appx files from a non ltsb and install them with powershell?

[DigiBen]

Yeah we spotted it opens in paint, which isnt great as far as Teachers printing and pupil use. It is the old calculator that is present too. Ideally I was hoping LTSB had at least the Photos & Video viewer from W10, and the new Calculator but sadly not.

 

I understand that this is a cut down version, but it is a shame we can build on this version and add more. I have tried copying the appx files over from Pro/ENT, and registering them etc but it doesnt work. I believe there is a very long winded way to do it, but it would take too long a time to implement over an entire estate.

 

I agree on the pre-staged apps slowing down EDU, we actually uninstalled most and tested the login times but 2-3minutes was the best we could get. Did anyone get it faster on a domain enviroment?

[Garacesh]

Yeah we spotted it opens in paint, which isnt great as far as Teachers printing and pupil use. It is the old calculator that is present too. Ideally I was hoping LTSB had at least the Photos & Video viewer from W10, and the new Calculator but sadly not.

Why would you ever want a metro app running? They're ridiculously resource-hoggy. Honestly that's the main reason I'm using LTSB - that and it doesn't get sodding Candy Crush et al pushed to it.

Photo viewer would be nice to have, but it's not required, it's a reasonable sacrifice to claim back hard disk space, speed up login times, and stop Microsoft 'suggesting' what I should have installed.

[Winner]

You can re-enable Photo Viewer in Windows 10 Education. First go here to get a reg file that enables it. Best way to deploy this is in Group Policy Preferences so we need to convert the reg file to an xml file that can be copied and pasted into GPP. Easiest way to do this is here.

 

Finally, you can change the default apps in Windows 10 by editing/overwriting c:\windows\system32\OEMDefaultAssociations.xml. I keep the master version of this file in our DC netlogon directory and copy it to PCs with a computer group policy preference. I have included ours below for reference:

 

[Winner]

I think Education seems the best bet

Sadly though during our time trials LTSB was under 2 minutes for initial login, but Education was 3-4minutes for initial login. So this is going to annoy the pupils without a doubt!

 

We are using Education, Microsoft are promising new features exclusive to this edition in Anniversary Update and going forward, (see here). In the blog post it mentions they are going to improve first login times, but for now we are optimising logon time in two ways. First, we remove all the default apps (bar the Store) with the following powershell command:

 

Get-AppxPackage –AllUsers | where-object {$_.name –notlike “*Microsoft.WindowsStore*”} | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxProvisionedPackage –online | where-object {$_.packagename –notlike “*Microsoft.WindowsStore*”} | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage –online

 

Certain apps cannot be removed (i.e. Edge, Cortana) so you have two options to further improve login times. Option 1 is to use AppLocker in Group Policy to block the modern apps. This works well, but at each logon the "App Readiness" service will still have a go at setting the apps up at each logon, which delays getting to the desktop.

 

Option 2 is to disable the "App Readiness" service. When this is disabled Windows wont bother trying to setup any of the modern apps at logon. The Settings app and Cortana will still work, but you sacrifice having Edge. We have decided to go with IE 11 as the default browser for best compatibility with existing systems (online exams, intranet etc.) and also install Google Chrome. We also install Microsoft Calculator Plus as an alternative to the modern app.

 

Finally, as an extra tip take a look at the VMware OS Optimisation tool. It's designed for VDI environments (which we also run), but can help you identify services and scheduled tasks that can be disabled on physical PCs in a domain environment to further improve OS performance.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Winner

[Garacesh]

Certain apps cannot be removed (i.e. Edge, Cortana)

 

Cortana can be disabled via GPO, might help.

 

Computer Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Data Collection and Preview Builds

Allow Telemetry: Disabled

Computer Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Search

Allow Cortana: Disabled

[Winner]

Cortana can be disabled via GPO, might help.

 

Computer Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Data Collection and Preview Builds

Allow Telemetry: Disabled

Computer Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Search

Allow Cortana: Disabled

 

Yes, that's a good tip for disabling Cortana functionality, although even then the modern app is installed under C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy

[DigiBen]

We are using Education, Microsoft are promising new features exclusive to this edition in Anniversary Update and going forward, (see here). In the blog post it mentions they are going to improve first login times, but for now we are optimising logon time in two ways. First, we remove all the default apps (bar the Store) with the following powershell command:

 

Get-AppxPackage –AllUsers | where-object {$_.name –notlike “*Microsoft.WindowsStore*”} | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxProvisionedPackage –online | where-object {$_.packagename –notlike “*Microsoft.WindowsStore*”} | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage –online

 

Certain apps cannot be removed (i.e. Edge, Cortana) so you have two options to further improve login times. Option 1 is to use AppLocker in Group Policy to block the modern apps. This works well, but at each logon the "App Readiness" service will still have a go at setting the apps up at each logon, which delays getting to the desktop.

 

Option 2 is to disable the "App Readiness" service. When this is disabled Windows wont bother trying to setup any of the modern apps at logon. The Settings app and Cortana will still work, but you sacrifice having Edge. We have decided to go with IE 11 as the default browser for best compatibility with existing systems (online exams, intranet etc.) and also install Google Chrome. We also install Microsoft Calculator Plus as an alternative to the modern app.

 

Finally, as an extra tip take a look at the VMware OS Optimisation tool. It's designed for VDI environments (which we also run), but can help you identify services and scheduled tasks that can be disabled on physical PCs in a domain environment to further improve OS performance.

 

Thanks!!! That is really appreciated and I will try that ps command out on the EDU version when I make the new image.

 

If we were to disable the App Readiness service, would we still be able to use the new Photos & Video viewer, new Calculator, and any other preinstalled app like PicCollage for example? Or would it stop them all?

 

For a users first login, what is your current login times for EDU? Just so we can compare please

[Winner]

Unfortunately no, so your best option to optimise things if you want the modern apps would be to use AppLocker in group policy. Here is my example policy:

 

 

Here are some instructions to get you going

 

I've just tested logon times with a laptop which has an SSD. I am testing with local profiles at the moment. First logon was 32 seconds. Second logon 12 seconds.

 

I have verbose logging turned on so I can see the profile generation and group policy processes for the first 17 seconds, then a further 15 seconds on "Preparing desktop". I tune the timeout of "Preparing Desktop" with a user group policy preference registry item. If this is the first time a user logs on to Windows 10 I set HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DelayedDesktopSwitchTimeout (DWORD) to 15 seconds (I would rather users stare at this than a black screen until the desktop appears). If a profile already exists on the PC I use GPP item targeting to change this value to 4 seconds.

 

I have also disabled the following services with group policy:

 

 

And removed the following scheduled tasks with group policy preferences (please note some of these are filtered to only be removed on our VDI stations):

 

 

OneDrive client also tries to set itself up at every user logon (????) We stop this with a User GPP registry item. Just delete the key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OneDriveSetup

Edited April 15, 2016 by Winner

[Arthur]

In the blog post it mentions they are going to improve first login times

I wonder long login times will be in normal configurations?

 

• And, Windows 10 is faster than ever, with an average first log-in of 26 seconds and subsequent log-ins of 6 seconds*, helping classes with shared devices get productive quickly.
  

* For Windows 10 machines in the Shared Cart configuration, running on affordable hardware

Edited April 15, 2016 by Arthur

[Winner]

Yeah, that does make it a bit ambiguous. I've spent lots of time trawling the net for ways to speed up Win10 first login and we're certainly not alone here in complaining about it. There are threads on the Technet forums, spiceworks and many others. Hopefully this article means someone at Microsoft is listening and that this can be improved in all Windows 10 editions.

[free780]

Its the fact the appx's are per user. If you could have per machine appx's with storage of settings in the profile. Only when the app is launched it would improve things.